Pink And Gold
by MaySoFarAway
Summary: A fluffy, flash-forward for Kid's Movies/Things We Learned From Wars. Steve and Darcy's family, across the years. Angst and Fluff.


((This is totally optimistic fan-service, as far as Marvel canon is concerned ;) In the canon of Kid's Movies and Things We Learned From Wars. Don't think this means I'm done with this Verse, though! I have many little ficlets still to write. But a little future-fic never hurt.))

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Pink and Gold

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They're officially in a place that Darcy had never thought they'd find themselves. Sometimes she thinks it can't actually be happening. But the fact remains that no mightily inhuman evil has threatened the Earth in three years. There have been wars, yes. Terror threats to address, peace talks between nations for super-people to attend, and the mutant laws still creating moral tensions around the world.

But overall, humanity tends to settle, knowing there's someone looking after them. Plus you can't forget Tony Stark's green energy plan, which is now powering more and more of the planet. And evil powers might be simmering out there, somewhere, but they also know the Avengers and their allies are never really resting, that they're always vigilant, and advancing their abilities as well. Sure, Darcy thinks, a super villain might crop up in another five years, ten years. But nobody's blown a hole in Stark Tower in years now, and she's feeling pretty content.

It's still kind of a surprise though, when Steve brings up the subject while they're out for dinner one evening.

"Let's have a baby," The words leave those great lips of his, and she almost chokes on her curry. He grins, that wide, goofy one she loves so much, "I'm serious!"

"I know!" She gasps out, reaching for her water and taking a long swig, "Which is why I choked!

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It actually doesn't take much convincing, because Darcy's been entertaining the idea herself these days. Something a good friend had said a long time ago, about taking hold of these peaceful times and living them for all it's worth. And Darcy has been amazing at a lot of things she never thought she'd be. SHIELD agent, wife, and a physicist now working on her masters, with dreams of a doctorate. Being a mother sounds like an exciting challenge now, as opposed to scary as hell. Steve, of course, was pretty much made to be a dad, all the super-soldier stuff aside.

They toy with the idea of not involving SHIELD in the process at all, but as Darcy really does want to do this right, and few people are as protective of Steve Rogers' genetics as SHIELD, they end up in the labs the very next day. Of course, they go to their favorite MD before anyone else.

"Everything on your end looks normal," Bruce tells Darcy at length, smiling a little at her not-very-well-hidden sigh of relief. "You don't have a lot on ice, but what you do have looks healthy." He glances at Steve, "And, well, you know you're fine. Serum."

"What he means is," Tony pipes up from somewhere in the corner, "He's amazed you haven't -made her lady oven grow back-, after four years' exposure to your super-soldier swimmers." Ah yes, there were definitely still ways to make Steve blush. Bruce rolls his eyes, scribbling something on a piece of paper.

"Go see Dr. London in medical," He tells her, "He's the only O.B. on the SHIELD payroll, between the two of us we'll...start looking for someone. Oh, do multiples run in either of your families?" He asks, and Darcy blinks, nodding.

"Well, mine anyway," She clarifies, Steve just shrugs. Bruce waves a hand.

"Doesn't really matter with this kind of thing, multiples are very common in the surrogacy procedure either way...ready for that?" He asks with a smile, and Darcy sees Cap swallow hard.

"Probably...life is probably only going to give us so many peaceful chances for this, so that's probably for the best." He blinks, grinning wide. Bruce smiles, and Darcy takes a deep breath. It was gonna happen...

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It turns out that SHIELD is -very- protective of Steve Rogers' genetics, and at one point some clueless lab monkey even makes a comment along the lines of 'Are we sure we want those genes mixed with hers?'. The man gets a thorough dressing down from Fury himself for that, after Steve nearly busts his jaw. Gruff and imposing as the man is, Darcy's glad he's on their side. While she's not naïve enough to believe that SHIELD will completely stay out of their kids' life, at least she knows Fury won't turn whoever's born to them into a straight up lab rat.

Something strange and alien happens to Darcy though, as they're presented with the best candidates for the surrogacy. She bites her lip hard, looking through the top three files, all women between 25 and 35, all who'd given birth before, all who'd passed health and psych evaluations. All three of them were pretty, soft, and married with kids of their own already. And they could all do what Darcy couldn't.

'Shut up, brain,' She grumbled, when she realized that Steve had noticed her expression, her lip-biting and hand-wringing. She shook her head, giving him a quick smile and diving back in, actually paying attention to the details in the files.

In the end, they both pick Rose.

Rose is only a few years old than Darcy, blonde, perky, and with a husband and triplets at home. It was when she told Darcy that "Yep, we figured, we had all the kids we wanted, and I was still young and got myself a nice stretchy uterus out of the deal, why not rent it out?", that Darcy knew she didn't want anyone else carrying around her spawn. She wanted them exposed to quality snark in the womb. The paycheck SHIELD is signing her will probably put all three of Rose's kids through college, too.

It takes on the very first try, and a black SUV with tinted windows takes Rose to SHIELD for her very first ultrasound, Steve and Darcy on either side of her when they get the news that they're expecting twins. Darcy feels a bubbling inside of her, something she never could have predicted, even as she's cracking jokes about how every sonogram looks like a Rorschach painting. Steve is totally tearing up, and she takes his hand, squeezing it tight. And then, because she's overwhelmed by what someone else is doing for them, Darcy gives Rose the biggest, Thor-style bear hug she can muster.

Their connection to Rose is kept top secret, or as secret as possible. She remains in Queens with her family, looking for all the world as if she's getting ready for her fourth child. However, the cribs, changing table, and other accoutrement arrive at her house during the day, and then go straight to Steve and Darcy's apartment. This is mostly to keep off the paparazzi these days, as opposed to any real fear of super villains. But it's an added bonus.

Eventually though, one can only keep the two of them away from their babies for so long. One Sunday afternoon finds Captain America and his wife at a playplace in the middle of a Manhattan mall. Rose's seven year old triplets, two boys and a girl, run Steve through the ringer as Darcy and a very pregnant Rose look on, laughing. "Oh he's a natural," Rose sighs, watching as Steve allows himself to be tackled by two raucous boys, while their sister keeps court atop the plastic castle. "He was made to be a dad."

"Yeah..." Darcy swallows, biting her lip hard. A hand pats hers.

"I didn't think I was cut out to be a mom either," Rose says, bluntly. "I wasn't gonna have kids until I was pushing forty and then it was either procreate, or be a soccer mom with a walker," She grins, "Funny what the right guy can do though...or, hey, girl, my sister and her wife are expecting too, and Laura always HATED kids. She barely tolerates mine."

"Seriously." Darcy chuckles, shaking her head, watching as Rose's daughter crowns Steve her prince, having defeated the brother-monsters, "You're like my spirit animal."

Still, there are those moments. Resting a hand on Rose's stomach, feeling their twins move in there, is amazing and makes a joy well in Darcy that she never thought she'd know. But then, later, she'll find herself tearing up, wishing it could happen inside of -her-. Rose jokes that she's having by-proxy hormones. And Steve is amazingly perceptive...a few years married to Darcy Lewis will do that to a man.

He learns to recognize these moods, over the course of nine months. Each time, he makes love to her, slow and attentive and assuring her all the way that she's entirely there, everything a woman can be and more, and he isn't complaining about anything she can or can't do. Few modern women would admit to some of the things Darcy feels over the course of Rose's pregnancy with their babies, she muses. For a man out of time, Steve is good at picking up on those secret feelings, without her having to vocalize them.

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Their girls are born on the 18th of August, 2017. Rose is a champ, and both babies come into the world squalling and flailing, healthy at first glance. Darcy's rarely seen Steve so happy, so undone, as he is holding both of his daughters in each arm. And frankly, aside from him, Darcy's never been so instantly in love with someone as she is with her babies.

Baby A is weighed, inspected, and deemed healthy. They name her Lucy almost without having to convene. She was always going to be Lucy, it's just the way it is.

Baby B has some complications. Her breathing isn't the easiest, and Steve seems stricken at this, holding her all the closer when Bruce finally deems her in the clear. She's Jane, easily, and for all her health problems in the following months, she's the one who calms easiest in her father's arms.

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Darcy had never really been around kids growing up. Her cousins and brother were all around her age, and she's the first in that generation of the family to have children. But all those visits with Rose and her kids have paid off, along with nine months of preparation. She's ripped a hole in space and time, Darcy can figure out a pair of infants.

Not needing nearly as much sleep as she does, Steve insists on taking them when they wake in the night, but Darcy protests, "Nope, gotta have my sleep deprivation, it's a rite of passage," She yawns, though this only lasts for so long. She's the one who's taken the time off from SHIELD, and while bad guys aren't running rampant, Steve still has plenty to do around the world during the day, as Captain America. And so she ends up gladly handing over the nights to him, after long days of feedings every three hours, diapers, crying, and watching out for Jane's thready breathing.

Besides, Steve adores his nights with the girls. He loves watching them, staring at their little faces, seeing Darcy in their lips, himself in their noses, their eyes. Lucy has a little bit more of his brow, though, and Jane has Darcy's smile, completely. Even though it's not her shift, sometimes Darcy will wake up with him and watch, as he sits in their living room looking over the city, bottles balanced against each other, Jarvis playing some soft song above while Steve just talks.

He tells the girls all about his mother, stories his wife has heard, but never in the sweet, untroubled voice he uses with the babies. He tells them about him and Bucky when they were kids. They might not understand a word of it, for the first six months anyway. But they both fix their huge blue eyes on their fathers' face, listening to his steady, deep voice, and Darcy finds herself falling even more in love with him.

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As the girls grow, their special genetics become easier to make sense of. Lucy seems to have gotten what traits the Serum can pass on, improved hearing, stamina, most everything Steve has really. She tumbles over and smacks her head on a weight bench when she's 2, on Uncle Clint's watch, but after only a few minutes of crying, the cut on her forehead is closing up and she's up and chasing after her sister again. She accidentally breaks a sippy cup when she's three just by holding it too tight, and she's never had a single cold, colic, diaper rash, or any other standard baby-malady.

Jane, however, is a different story.

"Genetics are a tricky thing," Bruce tells them over and over. "It's why mixed race couples can still have twins with exact opposite skin pigment, or generally dominant traits randomly decide to take a vacation and dark-haired parents randomly get a blonde or a ginger, and how Tony and Pepper have a son who is entirely disinterested in science, and just wants to finger-paint all the time."

Still, even after immunizations that take care of some of the things Steve struggled with as a child, Jane has terrible asthma and anemia, while her sister is healthier than any horse who's ever lived. At first, as a baby, Lucy's jealous of the extra attention her sister gets. The way Darcy gives her different foods, or how Steve holds Jane close with a hand on her chest, until her breathing eases. As they get older though, and Lucy's intuition kicks in, she realizes that her twin is sick at around 3 years old, and there's never been a more helpful, protective sister.

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"I'm still nervous," Steve admits on the first day of school. Darcy just grins, tugging a sundress over Lucy's head. Jane is already in her little dress and cardigan, all blue and gold where her sister is pink and white.

"Me too, Daddy." She admits, swinging a lunchbox with, yep, Aunty Nat on it. Lucy's has Spiderman.

"You don't have -anything- to be scared of," Darcy assures her, brightly, giving Steve a wink, "Either of you. Howie's been going to the same school for a year already, he'll look out for you." Jane smiles a little, but still twists her hands anxiously, biting her bottom lip hard, looking so much like a tiny version of her mum that Steve picks her up.

"Anyone gives you a hard time gorgeous, I'll beat 'em up." He assures her, kissing her baby-plump cheek, and Darcy just about melts.

"An' if he takes too long to get there, I'll kick 'em in the balls first!" Lucy pipes up, and Darcy winces. Yup, all her kid, that one.

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It's ten years after the girls are born, that there's an attack on the Tower again. There have been a few villains to fight in that time, yet blessedly, they've not been near New York. It finally does happen though, and Darcy's just glad that it's when the kids are old enough to understand, to process what their parents really do.

The girls and Howie Stark are doing their homework down in the labs, surrounded by physicists and one bored sharp-shooter, when the alarms go off. "Perimeter breach," Jarvis' calm voice sounds above, as Darcy and Bruce leap up, the former grabbing her gun, the two ten year olds and the eleven year old watching, wide-eyed.

"Erik?"

"Already got 'em," The older man smiles, motioning for the kids to follow.

"You stay with Erik and you go straight up to the Penthouse with Miss Pepper, hear me?" Darcy kneels in front of her girls, kissing them both, "The blast doors are gonna shut, and Dad and I will be taking care of things."

"I remember," Lucy whispers, clutching Jane's hand hard. Jane's already breathing faster, gasping a little.

"Take your inhaler baby," Darcy presses one into her hand, pushing them toward the stairwell, willing herself away, willing herself to put on her stone cold fox mask. It's harder these days, and when it's something so close. But she needs it more than ever now. She'll be stronger than she's ever been that day, because her babies are in this fuckin' Tower.

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They're almost to the penthouses, and it isn't really so bad, just kinda scary. Lucy sees the agents rushing the other way, knowing they're brave, doing their job, like her mom and dad do, with Uncle Clint and Howie's dad and everyone else. They're the bravest people she knows, and she's always wanted to be that brave too. So she is, Howie's really good at it too, but then, boys always try not to look scared. It's Jane she has to look after, she's always looking after, making sure she's taking regular puffs from her inhaler as they follow Mr. Selvig upstairs, meeting Miss. Pepper along the way.

It's when they're almost to the blast doors that something crashes through a window, and Lucy can't help it, she screams. It's green and scaly and tall, and Lucy's read a lot in the SHIELD files about aliens and beasts, but even the pictures don't make the real thing any less scary. And it has giant claws, and it's chasing them.

"RUN!" Miss Pepper screams, and Lucy runs, dragging Jane behind her.

They're almost inside the blast doors when the thing grabs Jane's arm, and it's tugging her out of Lucy's grip, and...

A blast of something like lightening leaves Jane's hand as she practically explodes with panic, blasting the alien all the way back down the hallway. Lucy yanks her the rest of the way in, the upper floors go full panic room, and she wraps her arms tight around her twin. "What...how did you do that?!"

"...I don't know." Jane gulps, her breathing normal.

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"Well, she might not have what the serum gave you, Cap," Betty grins, looking up from her microscope, "But her mutant gene is active."

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Jane Rogers becomes much more sure of herself in the following months. She still suffers from asthma, and still feels a little lost without Lucy nearby. But she gets far more confidant about being in the city on her own, being away from her parents for sleepovers or school trips, like Lucy's always done. And she lets herself make close friends aside from just Howie and her sister.

When he finds out her power is lightening, Thor is beside himself, and despite Steve's protesting, he takes her flying with him sometimes. Her power has nothing to do with the weather, it's pure electricity, but Thor still lets her channel it through Mjolnir sometimes. More than once Darcy catches them on top of the tower, making it storm, and she grumbles good-naturedly about no pop tarts for either of them, for a week.

Lucy Rogers might have been jealous, if it weren't for the fact that her free time is spent with Natasha, Clint or Bucky in the gym, like her mother before her, learning to fight, shoot, and defend herself from age ten onward. Jane learns the basics too, but her specific power requires some special instruction. She spends her summers at Xavier's institute, with other mutants her age, learning how to discipline her mind. She'd never live there year-long, though. She loves her Tower and her family too much.

Darcy and Steve actually don't want their daughters to become super heroes or SHIELD agents. They know they'll always be in a spotlight, that they could be targeted at any time, which is why they want the girls able to defend themselves. They've talked about it at length over the years, usually when one or both of them can't sleep and they stay up late wrapped up in each other's arms, talking about their wonderful, weird life.

"I mean, if it's what they want, they'll know more than any other kids what it really means, to live this life," Steve whispers into the dark one night, when Jane is away at school, Lucy off on a sleepover. "But..."

"Yeah I'm making SURE they know," Darcy chuckles, burrowing into her husband's side. He looks the same as he always has, she muses, sliding a hand over his stomach. She's still quite fit and young herself, but at 35, Darcy has to put in the extra effort now, eating even better, working out every morning. She tries not to think about it too much, though. Not yet. "...I like our life, handsome. But if they can manage to have normal ones, I'll be so freakin' happy."

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There's a countdown online, to when the Rogers twins turn 18. Steve gets riled, but Darcy just laughs, tossing her hair in her leather catsuit. "Hun, pervs were pulling that shit when I was a teenager. Unlike the Olsen twins though, our daughters can physically destroy pervs with their own two hands."

Jane and Lucy Rogers are gorgeous, there's no denying it. As far as looks go, nature was on their side to begin with of course. Blonde when they were younger, their hair has darkened to something like their mother's, a warm chestnut brown, their eyes wide and blue, and though they're not actually identical twins, they're still hard to tell apart.

They're good girls too, though. Lucy's had a string of boyfriends, sure, and even went through an alarming phase when she was crushing on James Barnes. But she's a confidant girl, with all of her mother's smarmy attitude and self-respect, and a knack for physics. Jane hasn't dated at all, but she does love her designer clothes, and art, her worst sin in high-school being that she swiped one of Tony's credit cards to buy an actual Rembrandt. Because it matched her room.

"College plans, go," Darcy pipes up half-way through the senior year, hair piled up on her head, gray streaks freshly covered up. Standing in the kitchen, the girls look at each other, silently sharing their thoughts.

"MIT." Lucy says right away, grinning. "I have backups I'm gonna apply to, but...yeah."

"...There's this art school, upstate?" Jane says quietly, "It's pretty hippy," She smirks, "The dorms are these converted warehouses, but they've got some really amazing people teaching classes..."

"You have both passed the test," Darcy smirks.

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Lucy joins the Avengers right after college, fighting the fresh new wave of bad guys even as she works on her masters. She hasn't changed much, either...in fact, though he knows it's hard to gauge now, Steve would bet money on her not having aged since she turned 18. It's more obvious when she's near her twin, who's just as beautiful, but has developed a maturity around her mid-20s features. Jane, despite her mutant ability, opts to remain an artist, eventually opening a small shop in SoHo.

Steve is, frankly, in awe of her talent. Like him, she has a gift for faces, for capturing expressions. There's an eye for color though, that he'd swear she got from Darcy, translated through some special gift that's all her own. Her bright reds and yellows and greens remind him of his wife, of her raucous laugh and wide smile. When Jane paints their family portrait, in the vivid colors of their life, her mother is as brilliant as the sun.

Lucy Rogers and Howie Stark have always been tip-toeing around something. He put up with her dating every handsome jock in their private school, including a Pitt-Jolie. She put up with his gothy, hipster phase in freshman year at MIT. Now though, with him working as a downright brilliant analyst for SHIELD, the two of them seeing each other every day as mostly-grown adults, it's only a matter of time. Darcy actually ends up having to pay up with Tony, the first time someone stumbles in on Lucy and Howie in a supply closet.

Jane, meanwhile, has never had a boyfriend. Her best friend was Howie, but they were too alike to ever be more, and she knows he's perfect for her sister. Jane hasn't ever wanted anyone, guy or girl, and it worries Steve for a time. She's so much like him, he hopes she isn't cloistering herself because she's different, because she has her power but still her asthma, her anemia. He's close to talking to her about it, when things start becoming a little clearer.

She's 27 before Thor finally gets up the nerve to ask her to fly with him again, like she did as a little girl. They'd been such buddies over her adolescence, when her power first came to her and he could understand what it was like, but around 14, when her mother's -other- genetic gifts came a'calling, that had ended. Jane had been waiting for when it was okay again.

Thor is honorable to the core. And it's nothing to do with her name, that's simply a coincidence at this point. Jane Rogers is kind, and strong, in a quiet way. Aside from a few short years with Sif, Thor hasn't loved anyone in a long time. When he finally goes to her again, she smiles, taking his arm and letting him fly her around the city, lighting up the smoggy clouds with flashes of light.

Steve and Darcy feel like it -should- be weird, but it isn't. Their mutant daughter is deliriously happy with the god of thunder, and Steve finds himself letting out a breath of relief. She wasn't afraid. She was just waiting for the right partner.

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Darcy Lewis-Rogers dies at the far too young age of fifty-five. After over 30 years with SHIELD, with Captain America, fighting off countless villains and in many wars, she dies in a freak incident, a novice marksman getting in an unlucky shot. However, she dies protecting her grandsons, two princes of Asgard, and no mother could ask for a better death.

Jane Rogers and Thor choose to keep a home in a well-to-do gated suburb, to give their sons a somewhat normal human life, at least for the school year. Their summers are spent in Asgard with one set of grandparents, or at Stark Tower with the other, two moppy blonde boys with bright blue eyes and their grandmother's lips. "Fucking heartbreakers in the making!" their aunt Lucy often says, strutting around the Tower in her red, white and blue suit. No stars, though...she likes to joke that she's representing France.

Darcy is as tough, as beautiful, and as good a shot as she's ever been, but perhaps not as fast, as agile, and hey, that's all right with her. Steve still adores her, finds her body a treat, and there's no shame in letting off her work load a little, to spend time with her grandsons. It's on a night that she's babysitting, while Thor and her daughter celebrate their anniversary, that someone decides to break into their house.

They didn't know whose house it was, when they picked it. One look at the sons of Thor, though, and they get stupid, talking ransoms, and Darcy decides she's put up with their shit for long enough. She yells at the boys to go upstairs, and they do. She then pulls her gun, and fires at both the intruders, taking them down easily. One gets off a single, panicked shot, though, as he falls. It ricochets, and finds its mark.

Despite the house having security systems fitted with Jarvis himself, they don't get to her in time. Darcy lasts just long enough to see Steve again, as if she'd been willing her damaged heart to keep beating, until he showed up to cradle her in his arms.

"Love you forever, handsome," She murmurs, and he clutches her close.

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"Will you be okay, though?" Lucy bites her lip, taking her dad's hand tightly in hers. On his other side, Jane is leaning against him, her head on his shoulder, one of the boys in her lap, as they take the long hearse ride to the cemetery. Steve Rogers actually smiles, though it's small, sad, his eyes red.

"Always, baby," He murmurs, "She was proud, going out the way she did...mightn't have been the world at stake, but...it was her grandkids. Your mom died happy...too soon. But proud and happy."

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Steve is 150, officially, before he sees his first gray hair, crow's feet already there. Most of those around him have passed, including his wife, one of his daughters, and two super spies he was especially fond of. He's got his best friend, though, aging at about the same rate, along with Tony Stark, and his never-ending heart. His son-in-law is a Norse God, and his grandsons are demi-gods who can wield lightening. And he will always have Lucy.

Lucy, who goes by Lady Endgame, will outlive him no matter what. Her son with Howie Stark will outlive her, and so on. Steve misses Darcy every day, and has felt no need for someone new. That time of his life has passed, and it was brilliant and wonderful and everything he'd thought he'd never have. Jane went in her time, and Lucy felt that loss like the loss of a limb, but they still have each other.

He has a legacy that will live on, something he remembers on the hardest days, when evil seems endless and the world a little hopeless, even as it moves closer and closer to an enlightened day. Steve is no long singular, and that's a comfort. He'll still have his family around him when he goes to be with Darcy, whenever that day is.

It's a day Steve doesn't hasten. He has grandsons to watch grow, a daughter to be there for. But he certainly looks forward to it.

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